Football has always been a sentimental game, and also a conservative one, wedded to its rites and customs. However, the sight of Manchester United and Chelsea supporters engaged in a pre-match "minute's applause" in memory of the late Sir Bobby Robson before the weekend's Community Shield match at Wembley suggests that some things do change. Robson will also be honoured with a minute's applause before the first round of Premier League matches this weekend. The minute's silence, it seems, is dead. Long live the minute's applause.

This hasn't come completely out of the blue. The minute's applause has long been the custom in Italy, although there it tends to start with silence and build to a peak level of applause from about halfway through. British observers had often commented that this seemed a warmer, more celebratory tribute. So applause began to creep in here, albeit not without resistance. Last Armistice Day some war veterans were upset that Scottish clubs were offered the choice between silence and applause to mark the occasion. Similarly, in January last year, Manchester United stood fast against urgings to honour the 50th anniversary of the Munich air crash with applause, rather than old-fashioned silence, during the derby match against Manchester City.

Which offers a hint as to why the applause-mongers have increasingly held sway. The fact is, football has often struggled to keep its mouth shut, its minutes of silence breached by partisan yelp or parade-raining obscenity. The minute was already being cut to 30 seconds. So clapping appears to offer a deeply English solution. Never mind all the warm, celebratory, vaguely Mediterranean stuff. The minute's applause is also a way of avoiding not just an uncomfortable silence, but a minor social embarrassment too.

Whatever the reason, it does seem a shame that we've come to this. A minute's silence inside a packed and excitable stadium is still an unbearably potent memento mori. Applause can seem lukewarm and perhaps a little odd, even if, in Robson's case at least, it does seem entirely appropriate.